First of all, thank you for making a game that makes me willing to write a stupid long forum post. It says a lot about how much fun I’m having playing it. I would like to suggest that we should have a separate area to build building templates and expand some features in it. My reasons follow:
With the new workbenches coming into the game, my town building strategy has started to change. I’ll just lay out how I approach starting my town.
Promote trapper and carpenter
Start clearing trees
Workbench for carpenter – queue maintain 1 of every tool.
Queue carpenter to maintain 3 of every common building item and furniture I use.
Designate storage (must fix containers so I can use this instead!)
Farms
Outline first roads but do not start build
Build Inn – large building with 8 beds and 8 places to eat
After I have directed the people to build the Inn for my town, I figure out what I want to do next. I’m finding that I now have started building for each profession – I want to put the loom and the wheel inside the weaver’s house, I want to build the mason’s house out of stone, and I’d like to be able to pre-designate storage for the plants/wood/stone as needed nearby the workbench to be used. However, this takes a lot of steps to set up, and I’d rather go crazy making detailed templates that I can use in my games later.
However, there are a few things that I don’t think we can do right now
We can’t specify the settings for a storage item before we start
building.
We can’t set a zone inside or next to a building. (In my last town
the silkweed farm was in the Weaver’s backyard)
We can’t preconfigure a pasture with a wooden fence around it.
You can template a building, but you can’t template the path to the
front door. (in my towns, front doors must be at least 3 squares
from the main road.)
I would like to be able to create templates outside of the running game and pre-configure all of the detailed settings like zones, containers and workbenches. I would like access to all the possible items so that I can make a template for the wealthy mayor’s home/office which only uses the superior versions of every item, or items that will take some time to get access to. I think it might give me a reason to grow flowers, make window boxes, or even plant one of those saplings in the front yard.
I would also like to be able to set up the dimensions I would build on. For example, ask for a 10x10 square area for templating a poyo pasture, 10x20 for creating the inn and 20x20 for the entire setup of my food crops I needed. Being able to isolate the area without the rest of the world in the way would help with the creative process, and I think some people would enjoy just making designs outside of the main game. With the right strategy I can Tetris my templates together as I outline my city.
What would you like to be able to use or put in a template?
Maybe I’m not understanding but if you make another town (call it Construction yard), then build your templates and save them there, wouldn’t they move over to your other save?
Also, i have almost the exact same starting approach.
The template system isn’t complex enough yet to save what I want to put in the template, so it doesn’t matter what I do right now. I listed some of the current template limitations above.
Why do I need to start a new game and build every object in it (which may include building 3 or more of each item to get a fine version of it) so I can put it in a template? Lets say you want to place a forge in your template. You have to have a carpenter level up in order to create the mason’s tool, so that the mason can make a workbench and level up to make the tool have a blacksmith make a forge just to put it in the template. You could also have someone potentially use an object that you can only obtain from combating goblins - like the honor token. Just let me design my template outside of the game please!
If you are just going to design a templates before you play, I would prefer to remove everything but the 10x20 grid or the 10x10 grid of the 20x20 grid so that I know that everything fits exactly in the dimensions that I specify. In game you have to count manually and zoom around. and oftentimes things can still be off by a certain amount. Remove all of the distractions so you can focus on a nice design in your designated space.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for but I use microworld and the debug tools to design templates. I created a simple map that just has a lot of empty space and a bunch of building resources on the side:
It doesn’t have everything (it’s missing some of the clay doors, there are no lanterns or any of the “fine” doors/windows) but I use the debug tools to spawn these items in as needed.
Here’s the json file (I had to zip it to attach it here). It’s not perfect, but I’ve found it useful when I want to try out a building design. It’s also been nice to see if there will be an issue constructing it before trying it in an actual game.
I’ll put some quick instructions for installing the debug tools, microworld and this file for anyone who comes across this thread and isn’t familiar with these things. I’m not getting very detailed here (I’m sure there are already explanations about these things elsewhere in the forums)
The debug tools:
Installing this is easy now as it is included in the game. On the main screen: open settings, click on the Mods tab, and check on debug tools (this will require a restart).
Microworld:
this can be downloaded from the Stonehearth github and the Readme provides detailed instructions on how to download and install this mod.
Adding the building test world:
Once you have Microworld working, download the attached file in this post. Unzip it and you will find one file “building_test_world.json”
Place this file inside the Microworld mod. It belongs in the directory “Stonehearth\mods\microworld\data\data_driven_world”
Add an alias to the microworld manifest file. Open “Stonehearth\mods\microworld\manifest.json” and add this line “aliases” section:
